Nightmarish Dawn
by VesperChan
Summary: A curse eater, an Uchiha clan, a history neither party fully understands. Once more it is Sakura's duty, privilege, and curse to come to the aid of the Uchiha in a way only she can. AU. Sequel to the Nightmarish oneshot. Uchisaku


Nightmarish 80 years later...

* * *

He could feel her dying and he despaired. They told him it was only a matter of time before the ancient ones sought an end to their being, but he had never believed them until now. The curse eater stopped eating, leaving the world full of curses and the young emperor full of fear. How long did she have until she aged out of existence? How long until the cells she neglected puttered out?

"If you don't do something soon, there will be nothing left of your hime," the man made out of black hissed from the shadows. Another man, this one made out of white, grew out of the tile, followed by another and another.

"You can not leave, but we may," one of the white skinned men said, yellow eyes glowing. "Tell us to bring her to you."

"Not even you can do such a thing," the young god sighed, gray eyes sad and heavy with a thousand years of storms.

"Not on our own, and not with our own power, but she will come to us," the black Zetsu claimed, voice like ink. His words ooze over his lips and when they are heard there is a stain left behind. His words are permanent.

Pein flinched, but looked back, eyes wide.

"How?"

* * *

I am a dream swallower, and I poison myself. I have a palate for rare, erratic impulses.

— Anaïs Nin, from a diary entry featured in Linotte:  
The Early Diary Of Anaïs Nin (1914-1920)

* * *

There was a hole high up in the ceiling letting in silver light, dirty and faded from being filtered through a fistful of clouds. Through the beams she could see the dust motes floating, slow and aimless.

Sakura inhaled and the whole of her chest rose with the effort. When she breathed out her ribs shuddered with the effort. The wrinkles around her eyes were shallow but she could feel them shuddering from the things that now dwelt within her.

"No use hanging onto it anymore," Sakura said to the darkness before closing her eyes a final time.

Sakura burned from deep inside and the darkness within her writhed, screeching as it burned away in her belly. When she was done she exhaled and past her lips flew a pair of white winged swallowtail moths. When Sakura opened her eyes again they were younger and the white hair was pink in parts again. Sakura blinked and shifted in her seat, feeling younger and lighter. The sagging of her skin was undone and her hands showed youth again when she lifted them. Not full youth, she was still aged to that of a middle aged woman, but mere minutes ago she had been helpless without a cane and near blind, close to the end of her life.

"That must have been some curse they had you under," Sakura said, glancing down at the figure huddled on the floor. "I think it took me back thirty/forty years."

The girl on the floor looked up, eyes wide and clear. "Who…who…" she was searching for the old woman, the grandmother in the apartment one floor below, living alone and waiting to die. The middle aged woman in the theater seats was dressed in the same old clothes, but was too young to be the same woman. "Sakura?" Karin breathed, voice cracking.

Sakura looked down at the redhead's arms, still pink with the teethmarks of days prior. "You will heal in time. No one will take from you anymore. The curse has been devoured."

"How did you…Sakura, what happened to you? I don't understand." Karin stood and trembled in her steps towards the older woman. Karin herself was no more than sixteen or seventeen, but she had seen enough of the world's underbelly to age her more. "You did something to me."

"You were cursed, once upon a time I was a curse eater, so I ate it." Sakura sighed. "But I must confess, I haven't eaten in years and thought I might actually make it this time. I was so close to expiring. A few more years and I might have actually died."

There is a longing in her voice that makes Karin recoil. "You wanted to die? What does that mean? I've known you for years, why am I only now just…why are you now like this? I don't get it."

"People rarely do the first time they see it. But you've been cursed for a long time now, you just never believed in it. You explained it away, called it a disease and treated it with other diseases." Sakura lets her head roll to her shoulder as her eyes fall shut. "And that is true, your truth." She forces her eyes open even when they are so heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy…. "My truth is a different from your truth, but it was the only truth that freed you in the end."

Karin pulled herself up to her full height and stumbled forward. The floor is a mess of rotting wood and decay. There used to be heavy red carpets laid down between the seats, but what is left is a frayed, rotting mess. The theater is old, older than most structures still standing. In the light of the moon, illuminated in all her fashion, Karin is too out of place to look like she belongs among the decaying ornate trim and flourished molding. Karin doesn't belong in such a place, but Sakura does. There isn't a place old enough to not suit her anymore.

"What happened to you, Sakura? You're not…you're not a grandmother anymore."

"That is what happens to curse eaters who eat for the first time in eighty years." Sakura looks down at her hands again. "It wasn't a big meal. I don't know if those even exist in this modern world anymore." Her eyes canter towards the ceiling where the hole lets in light and stays there, even as Karin draws closer.

"Sakura…" Karin's voice is soft, and most of the panic is gone. "Did I hurt you?"

She almost winces at the sound, remembering Karin as a child, as a girl too small for her shoes, stumbling through the hallways and making noise for everyone else on the floor above them. Karin annoyed a lot of people as a child, burning tearing and destroying whatever she could get her hands on in an attempt to earn attention. Karin had been a child lashing out at Sakura's garden once upon a time. Sakura was the only one who was more concerned with the small girl's hands instead of her prized roses.

Karin grew and the world around her grew too…harsher. Sakura seemed to be the only constant in the troubled girl's life and that made it all the more easier after fifteen years of watching her grow, to break a promise made to herself too long ago.

"You could never hurt me," Sakura laughed, voice tired and aged. "I was here before this building was even conceived. I sat in these seats opening night. I remember the first flickers played here, nothing you would ever appreciate. I am too far gone to be hurt by you."

"Sakura…." Karin's a young woman, seventeen, almost eighteen, but her voice belongs to a child tearing up rose beds.

Sakura stirs in her seat, pulling her upper body forward to sit up with the bones and muscles of her body. The cane is still there, but she holds it for decoration now. "The keys to my home are under flowerpot, you know the one. Go to my home and take it for your own. I won't need it anymore."

"You're leaving me?!"

Sakura's heart almost breaks for the way her almost daughter falls into a seat one row in front of her. Karin looks more than just distressed. Karin looked frightened.

"There is no place for me there." Sakura turned the end of her cane around under her palm so that the crow's head faced outwards. "There's no way the eyes that have been searching for me for so many years will miss the purified moths from tonight. I will need to leave. You are safer with me far away…at least…for now."

Sakura stood, and her frame is full of strength, even if her hair is still gray and her face still wrinkled at the edges. The coat hung loose over her shoulders doesn't fall, even though her arms never thread through the sleeves.

Karin's face is wet and her shoulders are shaking for a new reason. "What will I do if I need you again, you can't just leave! I don't have-I don't have anyone else I can rely on."

"I've been lazy long enough, but it's been too many years since I've done good things and I must make up for all the time since lost. You will live as a woman of independence lives. I know you can. Don't be afraid."

With one hand Sakura reaches across the backs of the seats and touches Karin's forehead with her index and middle finger. A faint light and a second later Karin makes a sound like a snore and her eyes drop, following the weight of her body as she sinks into the old seats. It is a quiet night and a warm night so far from the city. Karin will be safe until she wakes in an hour's time with enough knowledge to set him a new life for herself, just like how Sakura set up a new life for herself more than once.

It's no small trek by foot from the abandoned theater to the city, but it's no lesser trek from the city to the wilds of the Appalachian mountains where an ancient railroad used to ghost through. Nearly a century after the abandoned towns became hubs for moonshine bootleggers, only a handful or original structures remain.

There's one, choked with ivy and overgrown with moss and fern. Sakura sees a parchment nailed to the door and reaches for it. The paper nearly dissolves under her fingers. It's been nailed to the door under the elements for years.

Someone knew that once upon a time this was a place she called one of her homes, a place far away from prying eyes where she could forget to worry about the eyes on her, searching for her magic. Only a few knew about it, but the years have been long since she last trusted people she knew.

Sakura rips the parchment from the nail and pushes the door open, ignoring how it glows with a seal that means nothing to her. It flashes and fades just as brilliantly.

Sakura takes a day and a half to clean out the place, thankful for the way her body moves without her mind. Her mind is far off, set apart from her and her hands need something to do. Her mind has been awake for too many years to not have places it can wander.

When everything is said and done and the interior is washed out Sakura finds herself unable to ignore the paper she once tore from the door. She peels it open and frowns when she sees the ink has run so terribly it is impossible to tell what it once said just by looking at it. Sakura pushes down the edges of the paper and runs a hand over the bends and folds, flattening it before setting it on fire and burning away the years and the wear.

She stood up so fast her chair tipped back once the parchment was young and fresh again.

"Uchiha."

The voice was her's but not. Sakura looked up and saw another version of herself sitting at the table, frowning down at the letter. While Sakura's skin remained fresh and white, this Sakura's skin was black and the whole of her outline was a negative version of Sakura.

'Inner.'

"It's been a while since we last spoke. A week and a half without contact and snap," Inner Sakura snapped her fingers, "I'm back to prove you crazy."

Sakura swallowed, knowing she was worse than crazy. She was ancient and starving and fighting with her nature to keep from feeding in a hope of dying off. Inner Sakura was the agent that compartmentalized all Sakura knew, she was the keeper of secrets and protector of memories. Sakura wouldn't have survived the centuries so brilliantly without Inner.

"This letter is decades old. They can't still be…" Sakura swallowed, knowing well and good that the Uchiha were just as immortal as she was. "They know better than to still be searching for me."

Inner laughs and the whole shack shakes. "Uchiha are, by far, the least likely to know better when it comes to giving up on us. Their curse was strong, remember? They're bonded to us for life in one way or another, and unlike poor Karin, these flesh bags don't age out and die."

"They should know better than the others," Sakura hisses, crossing her arms and glaring down at the table where the letter sits.

The walls around them groans from the pressure of Inner's power, erratic and charged. The edges grew deeper with shadow all around them. "Even after what happened to Deidara and Sasori, they're not going to give up so easily, not even after a hundred years. Even after-"

The visions come rushing back and it's like being trampled by hooves, sharp edged and bearing.

" _Enough_!"

Sakura's eyes flash and the corners of darkness are filled with stars, blinding and blazing and burning till the black is eaten up by light that leaves her blinded and shaking. Inner Sakura is gone, and she is left alone once more, unsettled by the shock of using long silent power. It's been _decades_.

'Look at the note at least.' It is the last thing Inner says before silence wins her over.

It's an old note, but not as old as Sakura first suspected. The first line reads in a familiar tone of longing and missing and hoping she'll come back out of hiding-that the world isn't so scary. But then the note goes on and she frowns at the words. Sasuke wrote it, she recognizes his handwriting. There's something about the extension of their clan, how someone came to them with information about other Uchiha caught in a curse and needing help saving them.

'Once we rescue them from the mirror land we will find you. Please let us meet you this time.'

That was years ago. Was it possible it took them that long to find a few extra Uchiha? Yes. Was is likely? Hell no. That meant something went wrong with Sasuke's stupid little plan. Who did he think could help them find more Uchiha? Stupid boy believing in such things.

Sakura wasn't spry anymore, but she wasn't so weak she couldn't manage a simple scurrying spell. She pulled the mirror down off the wall and set it flat across the table before drawing water to pour over the surface. Her hands filled with power and she filtered it all down to a simple point, her right index. She touched the glass and watched how the ripples seeped into time and tore it apart, remaking it for her. She thought of Sasuke, and then she thought of Itachi, knowing the two would be together alongside Shisui and the others she freed from the curse so long ago. She'd find them all together and they'd be fine and-

"NOT SO SIMPLE!"

The mirror shattered under her hand, sending glass shards and water up around her wrist in a screech that shook her bones. A face emerged from between the damage and the it was gone, but not before the sound of his laughter made her ears ring in sickening familiarity.

"The wise man!" Sakura hissed, dark skin and gold eyes flashing in her memory. How many centuries had it been since she last heard his voice or saw his figure? She had assumed him dead, even a man of magic had to die eventually. It wasn't like he swallowed a star or anything…

Sakura's body sank in the seat, sagging with the weight of revelation. Zetsu's darker thrall, the man made of black, was alive and active and he knew about the Uchiha. Somehow he knew about her connection to the family. He knew, he knew, he knew…

'Is he still trying to rip down the heavens for himself' Sakura mused, fearing the answer. Over a thousand years ago she knew him as a man who served with secret ambition to dominate the gods of earth with might from heaven. He had tried to unmake Sakura in the courts of the boy emperor for it,, but he had failed and the whole Olympian court had been fractured out of time and space for it, trapping Pein and his court in a space only she could slip from. Yet, somehow this wise man had made it through, made it out to where Sasuke and the others were.

Sakura felt a rare roll of fear deep in her belly and gripped the arms of her chair to steady herself.

'Not so simple…'

Once upon a time he would tease her with those words. She knew what they meant. She knew he was baiting her, because he knew she would come. But did he know she was weak, that he was decaying, that she was dying, that she planned on letting the star inside of her go out…?

"He knows."

She spoke the words aloud, not needing a reason to keep them to herself. He took the Uchiha boys as bait for her, knowing sooner or later she would learn and come to their aid. He knew she was looking for them now, he knew she was coming, maybe he even knew hold aged she seemed on the outside without a decent curse to feast on in decades.

Sakura tore the dress off her shoulders, ripping fabric to shreds and stripping herself of everything left to her body. Her hands were strong enough to rip apart the seams and release her from the bindings.

Naked, she crossed the floor into the adjacent room to stop in front of an old steam trunk with another nasty seal over the brass lock. It flew open with a shattering clang and the insides were laid out. There was screaming from deep within the steam trunk, and when Sakura reached down into it, she almost lost herself in the stretch for the box at the bottom. She broke open the box of polished wood and drew out the ivory handled katana, inscribed with the markings of a dozen different battles. The katana in her hand hissed at her touch, weeping with curses.

"I've never seen something so old, but I'm hungry for the first time in a long time, so you'll have to fill me," Sakura seethed, gripping the katana in two hands and opening her mouth. "Come, devour me if you can."

The curse from the bone sword swarmed like a cloud of locus around her before her jaw set and her lips pulled back over her teeth to suck in the darkness and swallow it all the same way a supermassive blackhole swallowed light and stars and hope far out in space. Sakura felt herself burn for it too, her insides licked aflame with the cleansing inferno that burned the locus back into moths. Her naked body glowed and shook as black veins took her over.

 _'Beware ye who swallow stars, the world is you're to mourn.'_

Sakura felt a snap and a pull as the direction changed and instead of in everything wanted to come out. Tears thick with light caught in her lashes as she inhaled deep and then set her lips back to unleash the flurry of beating white wings as Atlas moths, bleached white and pure, fluttered free.

The bone sword was ancient, but it's curse was older, from the time of pyramids and Pharaohs. Sakura dropped the smoking sword to let it land with a dull thud at her feet. She exhaled again, tasting moth on her tongue before coughing. Her body was vibrating with more fire than she had ever felt before with the exception of that first day, the day she first swallowed a star between the grasses of a far of country off the silk road.

Sakura reaches up shaking hands to run through her hair, feeling it long and flowing around her fingers. When she turns she feels it across the back of her legs, down to her ankles. She would need to cut it again before she left. She was probably young, doe eyed and fresh faced to the world with a body of a girl in her prime.

A second mirror, one not shattered by far off magic confirmed her suspicions.

Yes, she was young again, a girl with peach skin and doe eyes and long flowing maiden hair that cascaded over her pert breast and supple thighs. She was more radiant than she ever remembered being. She was glowing.

If this is what the bone sword did to her, she didn't want to know what the Obelisk icon would do to her.

Sakura reached for the bone sword and slipped it free of it's sheath. Angling it away from her neck, she grabbed her hair and pulled the blade across, sheering her hair short but not so short it couldn't be manipulated back and pinned up away from the face.

Still unclothed, she crossed the room to a new door and pushed magic into the brass handle until it glowed red. She turned and stepped through, leaving the shack in the wood for the townhouse in Boston where she had run her shop for so many years.

The white drapes were everywhere and dust still found a way in.

The bedroom on the second floor was quiet, but the wardrobe still had her high collar black morning dress with the thin sleeves all the way down to her wrist, dotted with mother of pearl buttons as pale as her skin. She pinned her hair up at the vanity and painted her face for battle with wide red wings under her lashes to match her lips. A robe of Spinning red and gold mandalas slipped over her shoulders, wide and flared.

A shuffle from the doorway made her turn, dropping the vile of old perfume to see the sturdy figure of her once trusted friend and confidant. Sasori stood in the doorway, eyes dull and faded. His shirt front was unbuttoned and she could see the hole where his heart canister should have fit. It was still empty.

She wanted to curse his face, but she schooled her features into something unimpressed and spoke with a voice as even as well water.

"Good, you came."

"I am to come when I am needed," Sasori responded, voice dead and lifeless. Just like a puppet's voice should sound.

Sakura stood, dropping the vile into a box of gold bobbles. "You're opening the portal for me. I am to go to the underneath and trespass. I must leave quickly."

Sasori led her down to the parlor and rolled back the rug before drawing the star on the wood floor with chalk. Sakura waited and watched as he moved to assemble the elements for each point out of her cabinet of mysteries. He was perfect in his servitude, never looking up or distracting himself, never questioning or second guessing. When he was finished he stepped away, nodding his head to her in deference.

Sakura wanted to scream at him, wanted to break him apart into pieces like she had so many times before, but she didn't. She had other angers to address.

"Will you need my magic to jumpstart the transference?" the puppet asked, looking lost and absent in his own body.

Sakura stood in the center of the star and raised her hands above her head, pointing them into a triangle. "I need nothing from you," she intoned, shutting her eyes and dipping down into the new pool of magic that was wild and unending once more. It would be centuries before she could think about aging out of her body at this rate.

Between her fingers she let the silver chain with the white and red fan dangle and thought of the hopeless gaggle of Uchiha immortals who she had been away from for too long. It was still for a single moment before it began to spin wildly beneath the tent of her fingers.

The world tore apart around her but before it was gone completely she opened her eyes and searched for Sasori. All she saw was his empty body.

Then the world was black and screaming.

* * *

Someone was screaming her name and then running through the water to collect her.

When she awoke, a pair of arms encircled her body in a quivering possession while her head rested on someone's chest. She knew those arms.

"Should I compliment you on being fast, or were you just lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time?" Sakura hummed, smiling kindly up at the angular Uchiha who was known for his speed.

Shisui made a sound like a whine deep in the back of his throat, bent over her and looking down. "Sakura?"

She felt him hug her tighter with trembling arms. She knew it had been decades, but she hadn't known so long was 'too long' for the brood of Uchiha. What did immortals care for things like time?

Sakura hummed, sitting up, still in his arms. "I heard you were in trouble. Are you really so distressed to need me again after all these years?"

Shisui turned her around and took her face in, inhaling sharply. "Gods, you didn't. He said you would come and none of us believed him, not when we had heard what had become of you. Sakura, you…you were so…frail." His eyes are jumping all over her face, trying to find the end of her and continually failing. "I've never seen you like this before, not even after eating our curse. What did you do?"

Sakura bat his hand away and then pressed a single finger to the point between his eyes before her finger slid sideways over the silk patch that hid the spot where his eye should have been. He flinched and she grabbed his shirt by the collar, keeping him from leaving.

"What did he do to you?"

She doesn't miss the way his voice thins when he speaks to her. "This-this isn't because of anything current. This-ah, it happened a lot longer ago. Don't worry about me. I've since gotten used to it." He dips his head and it lands on her shoulder. "You're here again."

"Yeah. I heard you were in danger. Sasuke left a note on my door. What did he mean there were other Uchiha?" Sakura pulled back enough to take in her surroundings. "And speaking of which where did I end up? I don't recognize any of this…"

She stopped speaking once her words became a lie. The structure of the lake and the pavilions and the sprawling palace was new, but the sky…the sky was one she knew. It was low and bruised as far off galaxies try to press through the blue tapestry of a daylight heaven. Could Shisui see the loose magic spinning far off in the sky?

"Sakura?"

"Where did he take you?"

"It's a place called the underneath."

"Ah." She knew that much. The underneath was a gauzy thin world beneath their main world. It was thin like paper and easy to manipulate, but no less real. Magic users came to the underneath often when they didn't want to go far, but wanted to feel powerful. It was like a place with less gravity to boys who wanted to jump farther and leap longer.

Still, this quadrant of the world, this section, it was one she didn't recognize aside from the sky. The sky was one she saw the last night of her human life, expect this sky was less vivid. The stars were still far off, just out of reach.

"Sakura," his voice brings her eyes back to him and the one eyed Uchiha sighs. "The man in black said he knew you, he said he would be able to summon you back, but the others, the white vermin were everywhere and we got separated. There were Uchiha here, but I can't pin point their location anymore. We were using Itachi for that."

"You were tricked. The man in black is called Black Zetsu, he is the older one who created all the White Zetsu years ago when the Flesh Eating Tree still existed." At Shisui's blank look Sakura waved the words away. "The man in black and the vermin in white are the same, you were tricked here."

"I guessed that much already. Still, you're here. He was honest enough about that." Shisui laughs and it sounds almost light enough for Sakura to believe in.

With a flush high on her cheeks she lightly punches his arm and sighs. "Idiot, this is no time for laughter. How did you plan on getting out of this? Your magic is mediocre at best for an immortal."

"We wouldn't be immortal if it weren't for you," he teased. When she began to pull away he grabbed her wrist and tugged it close to his chest. "Can you feel it, can you admit to what's there? You're connected to me, you always will be. There are silver strings between your heart and mine, but more than that I've been remade for you."

Fear comes into her heart and Sakura almost panics. She expected this from Itachi or maybe even Madara, but Shisui was too forceful. He was throwing the fact that she was responsible for their life in her face where it would hurt worst. She sucked a century old curse out of each of them and had paid dearly for it. Now they were new creatures, new immortals, and the bond between maker and made was strong between them.

"I left."

Shisui's single eye spins wide and red, bleeding bright. "Yes, you did. You left me, you just up and-and you were gone and it was months of searching. We couldn't find you anywhere when you were hurting. Didn't you know we would care for you? Didn't you know we would take care of you?"

"That's not what I asked for."

"Didn't you know that you were our family?"

Sakura laugh is sharp and fast, cutting him quick. "Of course I wasn't _family_." Her eyes flash. "You think I don't know what happens to those silver strings wrapped around your hearts? You think I didn't know what would happen after everyone else died and it was just me and the Uchiha? I knew enough."

"No you didn't, we-you didn't know what would happen! You said it yourself, that you've never seen someone gain immortality from a curse like that before. You never had any of the people you save become immortal like you." His voice switches from that of a loud accuser to one that was on the verge of breaking. "Sakura, don't you think we were meant for something more. We were remade like that for a reason."

"Of course you would think something like that," Sakura sighed, shaking her head and tugging away. He was holding the base of her elbows again, rubbing circles into the parts where her bones bent. She blinked and forgot the sensation. "Think whatever you like. But I still have work here I must finish. It's partly my fault for not ending that man once I knew of his aims. I should take responsibility for the mess I ignored before he really does bring down the sky."

"What do you mean? Is that something he needs Kagami for?"

Sakura blinked. "Kagami?"

"The other Uchiha."

Sakura stood. "Do you have something of his?"

Shisui shook his head, frowning before he reached into the pockets of his fitted trousers looking for anything he might offer up. Sakura noticed he was dressed much like she last saw him so many years ago, still with a style set back decades in fitted trousers, a white dress shirt, and a button up vest left open to flab under his arms.

Now that she thought about it, Sasuke was the only one who really seemed to adapt to the changing styles. Itachi and Shisui were sticklers for their own era's dress and Madara, will that guy was a cad in whatever he wore. The others…she doesn't remember so well. Izuna was always so reserved, so quiet and kept to himself. Tobi was a mess in everything. She remembered other things…

"Never mind." Sakura pulled away and stood, rolling her shoulders as she prepared. "I can track him if I have a drop of your blood. You're both Uchiha so it should work. We might run across the others since they're also Uchiha, but that's fine. Who are you most closely related to?"

"Probably Kagami or Itachi and Sasuke. I mean, we're all cousins, but Kagami was my mom's younger brother. I'm closer to him than any of the others." He stood up, following her easily before biting his thumb and offering it to her. "You only need a little, right?"

She held his hand and nodded, looking down at the red of his thumb while he kept staring at her downturned face. He couldn't look away.

"Don't worry, this won't hurt." Sakura swiped her finger over his thumb and it came away like a bead or a bubble before lifting up into the air between them. Sakura's eyes spun with flecks of gold trapped between seas of jade as the blood bead turned and shimmered. Magic flowed out of her and the bead trembled before becoming an arrow that set off into the distance, across the lake.

Shisui grabbed Sakura before she could move, and picked her up into his arms bridal style. He was a dart across the surface of the water, running like it was no more trouble than land. Sakura kept her eyes glued to the form of the blood arrow as it covered lakes and forest floor, and wipe open expanses until it splattered flat against a stone megalith. Shisui stopped just short of crashing into it with her, touching down on the grass with her still in his arms.

"Is he inside that stone?" he asked, sounding worried as he took in the old Japanese scriptures and the knots of rope adorned in tags and wards.

"Well, it wouldn't be the first curse I've seen stuck in stone." She touched the rock face and grinned. "You might want to stand back."

"What are you going to-"

The words died as he saw her move. Fist raised and glowing green she drove it deep into the megalith, breaking it into shattered fragments that blew apart like paper in the wind. The earth around them echoed from the impact and the aftershock nearly tore Shisui off his feet. He had to bend down and grab for the grass to keep from flying away.

In the center of the stone a boy in chains slept. Sakura reached forward with her earth shattering hand and ripped the chains from his body like celery, snapping them with the might of on hand. A flurry of white moths rose up from where the black etching had been engraved into the stone and Sakura glowed once more.

"Not bad for a curse, but this one was much older than the one I ripped you and the others out of," Sakura murmured with a faint smile. "This one was completely different." When it looked like Shisui didn't understand Sakura shrugged. "Stronger, but with less teeth."

"Is he going to be okay. He still looks sort of out of it."

"He'll wake up in a few minutes. We should probably move him out of harm's way first. I don't want to know what else Black Zetsu had planned for you boys, as this is as much his world as anyone's. Help carry him out?"

Shisui took his uncle onto his back, frowning when he saw how light Kagami actually was. "He's younger than I thought he'd be. He's super light, too. Ah, actually he looks like what I remember him looking like when we first left the old country. He-Sakura can you tell how long he was inside that thing?"

Sakura picked up a stone and frowned at the fragment of the curse written across it's front. "That would actually make sense based off what you say. He's been in there since before they cast your curse. And by the look of this, there are others in this world. I don't know if they're still alive, but this curse wasn't written for one man."

"Are they Uchiha?"

Sakura frowns. "I don't know."

The man on Shisui's back moans, shifting slightly sounding like he will come to eventually. Shisui shifts his uncle up further, holding tight.

"That's something we'll have to figure out later. We only knew about Kagami, he's the only we came for."

Sakura nodded, reaching into the folds of her dress, looking for something she can use to help her track the others. Another blood arrow is a good option, but it's faster and more accurate with objects once possessed by the person being tracked.

"We're not done, you know." When she looks up Shisui goes on. "About what we were talking about. You're our family and we were meant to be together. Black Zetsu and finding the rest of our family comes first, but once that's done…" He stalks closer and Sakura doesn't move. It's so rare to see her back down, he's counting on it. He stops when they are a breath apart, head bent to hover over hers. "But once that's done I'm not letting you out of my sight for as long as I live. We were meant for this."

"Shisui, I-"

He doesn't let her finish. Even with his uncle on his back he leans down and kisses her full on the mouth, taking in all of her before pulling away with a chaste sound. His one visible eye is spinning with something ancient and unnamed.

Oh.

"Wh-wy-you-" Sakura is a mess that doesn't know what to do.

It makes Shisui smirk and his cheeks flush with giddy excitement before he leans in again and kisses the tip of her nose before pulling away on a laugh. "You're so flustered!" he exclaims. "Like you've never been kissed!"

"I-I've been kissed before," Sakura insists, turning a dark shade of red as she feels the heat from her embarrassment. It only makes the Uchiha in front of her stalk closer, smile stretching. He knows she's been kissed before. He's a snake to pretend and tease otherwise.

"I've kissed before too, and I know all the types of kissing there is. Your kiss, is by far the best…but I know it, Sa-ka-ra," he teases, releasing his uncle with one hand to pull her to him. "You're shy like a dove, aren't you? Of, what a pet."

Sakura can't breath as he leans down but before he can take advantage of her again there is a hand wrapping around his neck and strangling him. Shisui cries out in alarm and falls back, struggling with the arm. Sakura blinks, noticing the murderous red eyes of a new Uchiha.

"Shisui." The word is a growl as Kagami wrestled his nephew into a position of submission. "What are you doing to this poor girl, you dog? You think this is something you shouldn't be ashamed of?"

"Un-uncle Kagami, it's me, Shisui!" the younger Uchiha coughed.

"I know that, nowhere else would I witness such a shameful display with an Uchiha. My own nephew, too." Kagami switched his arm to grab a wide fistful of his nephew's hair and forced Shisui into a kneeling position in front of Sakura "Apologize."

Shisui grumbled but looked up at Sakura and she flushed again when he smirked, dreading the words that would come out of his mouth. "Sorry. You can punish me anyway you want to make up for it, but I kind of like the view from here."

"Idiot!" Kagami cried, burying his nephew's face into the earth with aloud bang. Still looking stormy, the older Uchiha looked up and met Sakura's eyes before some of the anger evaporated. "I must apologize on his behalf. That was stupid of him, especially after you just saved me."

Sakura chuckled. "That's fine. How about this, I'm going to open a rift back to my world, the over world, and once there the pair of you can wait for me to bring back the rest of the Uchiha boys. I have a servant, Sasori, waiting to take care of any needs you might have."

From his spot on the ground Shisui looked up suddenly. "Sasori is alive?!"

Sakura's smile was forced, but it didn't falter anymore. "He's a puppet. His human heart died long ago, but the body is no different than a machine's. If it breaks I fix it. He's working well for the moment. I should be able to wrangle up the rest of your family before he breaks down in another couple of years."

"That would be much appreciated," Kagami says before his nephew can say anything more. When it looks like Shisui might speak it is Kagami's heel that pushes the boy's face back into the dirt. "Whenever you're ready."

Shisui struggles but Sakura is already dazzling as veins of white stand out across her body, glittering with star tears. Her eyes blow wide, seeing everything before she brings two outstretched hands together with a clap that echoes in tears. She is fast as she digs her fingers into a tear and pull it apart. The world around her shudders as she drags the tear open wide and wider, making it long enough for both men to slip through. Kagami goes easily and with a thankful smile, but Shisui has to be dragged.

Once they are safely through Sakura lets the tear snap back with a crack that rocks her backwards on her heels. She breaths deep, feeling the tremors settle down inside her. So much magic so soon after so long makes her dizzy. In the first place she wasn't even strictly a magic user, just a girl who can eat curses. When did she become something that cut across words and chase down immortals?

Her thoughts are interrupted as a black snake, made of ink and curses slithers towards her. Sakura tenses before thinking better of it and turning heel to run. Of course someone would come to investigate a curse that suddenly disappears. Magic she can do, but she's still no fighter. It was only of the reasons she left Deidara and Sasori to their own decisions to serve her and be her sword and fist.

There is more of it, more slithering and more hissing and she knows the snake is not alone. She curses and runs faster wishing she was as fast as Shisui. She's running through a forest, maybe back towards the sprawling palace from earlier, when the earth tilts under her and she has to reach for the trunk of a tree to stay on her feet while the trunks of a glowing armored giant made out of mist steps down in front of her, faintly purple, the giant crushes the snake in front of her.

Sakura catches her breath as a hand touches the small of her back and she looks to see Sasuke there, beside her, sword in hand, smile stretched wide. Black blood is dripping off the blade.

"You came. I knew it was you we felt."

His voice is so full of relief Sakura can't help but feel guilty. She's stayed away so long. She doesn't want to feel bad for it, but his smile just hurts her that much.

"Yeah, it's me," she replies, smiling easily.

A snake darts for them between the giant's legs but Sasuke doesn't even look away from her to slice it in two. "You sent back Shisui and Kagami already?" he asks. Itachi sensed it from the castle and we were the only ones that could get out. Madara is still in there, but Izuna and Obito were able to make it back. Ah, you'll be happy to see how Obito's grown. He's able to slip us in and out of places so well now."

"Ob-you mean Tobi?"

Sasuke's nose scrunches up as he tilts his head back to stare down at her. It's some of the most expression she's seen from him sine he was a shy boy fresh out of a curse. Growing up cold and stoic had once seemed to be his dream or goal, but that was a long time ago. People change.

"He hasn't gone by Tobi in years. He's not a little kid anymore."

Of course not. It has been decades since he last was a child in mind or body. Immortal or not, he's a man now. What kind of person would that make him now? Suddenly she felt like she needed to see him. Her heart hurt. When Sasuke smiled at her her chest ached.

 _'That's the thing about silver threads, they go both way, don't you know?'_

She blinks, remembering what she needs to do. "Where is Itachi now?"

Sasuke points up and she follows to see a dark mart in the heart of the giant that is turning towards them. Sakura stays still as it kneels down and starts to dissolve into flower petals. A figure leaps down, landing lightly on the earth in front of her. He's dressed the same was as Shisui, but there is another layer of elegance in the way he keeps his vest buttoned and his hear neatly tied at the nape of his neck.

"Sakura," he breaths her name and she feels the way it sounds. "It really is you."

His eyes are soft when she nods her head in his direction. "Are you well? I heard you ran into trouble but you both look unhurt."

Sasuke grins, rocking back on his heels. He is wearing boots and black denim and a loose tee that doesn't make her believe in the katana he holds in his free hand. He's too modern to be so magical. "Nothing we can't handle. Not the same for someone like Shisui, though. Brat can only run well."

"Sasuke," Itachi admonishes his younger brother. "Do not speak ill of our cousin. He has done much for us."

Sasuke rolls his eyes and throws his hands deep into his pockets as if he didn't care about anything his older brother just said. "Whatever. Is that what you should really be talking about right now?"

"No…"Itachi's tone softens. "It is so good to see you again after so long, Sakura. I am glad to see you in good health after all the rumors I've heard."

"The world is cruel to girls who aren't beautiful," Sakura sighs, pretending to be lighthearted about it all. "You let yourself go for a little and everyone thinks you're ugly and wanting to die."

"I don't think you could ever be ugly," Sasuke mutters, flushing as he watches her."

"You didn't see me three weeks ago," Sakura chuckles.

"It wouldn't have mattered," Itachi says and Sakura believes him before she can stop herself with reason. He's staring at her with such honest eyes, too kind and too lovely and too open and too vulnerable. She can see down to the most basic level of his being and all of it loves her. All of her in all forms and all ages and all sins. He forgives her for leaving.

"Y-you said Madara was still trapped inside the castle. He need rescuing?"

"Don't let him hear you call it that, but yeah," Sasuke laughs.

"This- this feels too familiar," Sakura sighs, looking between Sasuke and Itachi. "Don't you think so, too?"

"You mean like how you found us in our curses that first time?" Itachi asks, frowning. He remembers well the day his life turned on a dime and became something more. For as long as Itachi lived, he would never forget that day. "Yes, it is what one would call ironic."

"Or intentional. Zetsu wasn't a part of the problem last time."

Sakura tells them a little bit about what she knows of the Zetsu, about how they are one in the same, a master and his men. She doesn't tell him about how they met, centuries ago in a palace by the sea with a boy who would be emperor who called her nothing but princess for as long as she lived.

"He sounds dangerous," Sasuke mutters at last, looking down at her hands.

She follows his eyes to her hands and flushes. "Such old ones usually are," Sakura concedes, smiling as she lets go of the clump of dress she had been gripping too tightly between her fists. Sasuke is still watching her, but it's not a a gaze that stifles her.

Itachi is not so obvious with his observations, but coughs lowly to drag her eyes away from Sasuke and set them on himself. Behind her, Sasuke glares at his brother.

"I'm just glad you're safe. We did not know the danger we invited when we made our decisions to work with such a man. You said his aim was to bring the stars to earth again, what does that mean?" Itachi asks.

Sakura lifts a hand and lets it rest over the curve of her chest, feeling heat far beneath her fingers, ancient and deep. "I was a girl when the stars fell through earth, trailing magic in their tails. That's where all magic comes from some say. In the first days, the old days, the stars fell every few hundred years, but since I swallowed one, there hasn't been a single star fall to record. The world's magic is drying up for whatever reason."

"Isn't that a problem for you?" Sasuke broke in, stepping closer. "You need curses to survive."

Sakura thought about it, how she consumed the dark things in people's hearts, how she burned them away like flak on a fire. It's what sustained her, it's what made her so powerful and dangerous, but it was also the thing she knew she was meant to hate.

"Curses aren't…. magic," she struggles to admit. "I mean, they are, but they're a different sort of magic; a stolen sort of magic. It's what I would call the opposite of my own magic. And yes, while there are fewer and fewer still for me to come across, I think I could survive like this for another dozen lifetimes without showing signs of weariness. I am not in any danger, but that is not what Zetsu counts on."

Sakura lifted a single hand and points to the place in the sky where it shows off a bruise freckled with stars. It's a sagging patch of not quite blue sky, closer than the others. Sakura notes that is larger from before.

Itachi's voice is a whisper as his eyes grow wide. "Is that what he's trying to do?"

"That patch is right over the castle where Madara is trapped!" Sasuke bursts out, stepping closer to his brother , looking to him for guidance before his eyes fall back to Sakura, as they always do. "Does he need Madara for something?"

"Bait." Sakura's smile is bitter. "He's reenacting the night I saved you all from your curses like it's some sort of play. Madara was the last one, and I am willing to bet he's even found a way to bring that man here."

Itachi's eyes canter to her and wait for Sasuke to say the thing his heart is screaming.

" _What guy_?"

She gives the words a moment to shape in her brain before she can form them with her mouth. She's never mentioned Pein to any of the boys, only Sasori knew about him and about what happened to her in the beginning of her life as in immortal.

Only Sasori knew about how she had been responsible for sealing the Court of Path of Pain away in a pocket world when the hands of Pein's retainers began to dip where they shouldn't. It had been the only thing she could have done to keep Pein from being swallowed up by their plan, or at least, that is what she told herself at night. She liked to say she hadn't any other choice, that it was the only way for everyone to live, but really, all she could say about herself was how gloriously she ran away again.

"The child emperor, a boy I raised from infancy to rule in place of all his selfish older siblings. He almost broke the world, so I sealed them away in a world that could survive breaking. He's unfocused destruction now, not knowing how to help it. Zetsu will use that man to his own ends."

The stare of the two boys is heavy on her. "How close were you when you sealed him?" Itachi asked, voice as soft as velvet to her ears. It makes it all the more harder to answer him.

She forced herself to smirk and play it off. It was easier after all the friends she had to see die for her. Pein's sacrifice and his forgiveness weren't things that crumbled her anymore. "Close enough for him to forgive me. But, if I have to finish him this time, I don't know if he'll be so kind a second time."

"As annoying as it may seam, if he's someone you helped in the past, I can't imagine someone ever hating you," Sasuke says through a pout, tugging on the edge of her trailing robe. She absently noted how his eyes complemented the color of it.

Itachi glares at his brother's hand, but is calm enough to keep from slapping it away. Instead, Itachi folds his arms. "So, I'm going to assume that this Zetsu is going to use your emperor to call down to stars, or is Pein merely a distraction?"

Sakura rolls her shoulder up in a shrug before letting them drop. "I don't know. He's almost been a person I could never figure out. But I know he wants a star and he can use Pein as a weapon or a distraction. There is no way for me to tell what he will do next."

"Not even with Madara?" Sasuke asks.

Sakura shakes her head, looking back towards the direction of the castle. "Not even with Madara. Sorry."

Itachi comes up along side her, close enough that his heat seeps into her. She looks up, startled, but closes her eyes when she feels his face descends. A soft hush squeezes her heart when he kisses the crown of her head. Sasuke stiffens, but doesn't move from her opposite side.

"You need not apologize to us for such a silly thing. Of course you do not know the future. We shouldn't expect so much of you. After all, it would be dangerous if you were so perfect and hadn't a need for us."

There's a bite of truth that makes her want to flinch away. She had run away from them before, and it wasn't because she didn't need them anymore, but that wasn't the point. Would it be such a wild thing to assume they considered her leaving had to do with her not needing them, with her not having any use for them? If there was something they could do for her, would she have left in the first place? If they could ease her fears and undo her words… The thoughts trailed off into dangerous quadrants of her mind.

"Itachi."

She hears breathing and quivers with the breath at her neck. Sasuke is pulling down the collar of her dress and she nearly cries when she feels his lip under her jaw. His mouth is warm in a way that melts her unexpectedly. She can't make her mouth form the sounds of his name when he kisses the veins of her neck again.

A hand on her hip tugs her closer to Itachi and she feels her knees go weak. His lips are on her face, trailing butterfly kisses through her hair to her temple to her cheek to the corner of her lips. She feels him tugging her closer even as Sasuke's hand slips off her him to her thigh, stroking it before sliding to her backside, making her chirp in surprise.

"St-st-wha-ah," Sakura quivers, so far from what she knows, she's a puddle between the brothers.

Itachi stills and then growls something before pulling Sasuke off her. Sakura falls without their support, feeling her heart beat out of her chest. She's breathing into the grass as she lowers her head there. Behind her she hears the brother scuffle before Sasuke throws himself off his brother.

"Damn it," Sasuke hisses.

"We went too far, you promised you wouldn't do anything she didn't want." Sakura looks up to see Itachi glaring at a sullen looking Sasuke.

When Sasuke notices her stare he flushes and looks to the ground. "Sorry, Sakura. You were surprised. We didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

"But you can't say you didn't expect it, can you?" Itachi adds in a softer tone, looking to Sakura. "You can't say you didn't know how we loved you."

Sakura flushes, feeling the grass between her fingers. Her heart is still a mess of feral beating. She hasn't been kissed in such a way since her girlhood days. She made it a priority to keep her magic to herself along with her body. Things hadn't gone so well in the past when she shared herself with others.

"It's not real-you're just reacting to the gratitude you feel from when I undid your curse."

"Bull shit, and bullshit if it isn't bullshit," Sasuke seethes, stepping forward. "I don't care about that, I've been feeling this way for seventy odd years. So what if that's where it came from. That don't make it any less valid of a feeling."

Sakura feels meek. She's over a thousand years old, but she's just a girl once again. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." Itachi kneels on the ground in front of her, still far away enough that there is a space of safety between them. "I would gladly suffer such a love for as long as I live for you. The joy and the heartache, I want it all."

"Not just you," Sasuke cuts in, standing closer. He doesn't bend down like his brother, but he keeps the space between them. "When we get back, when all of this is over, please face our feelings seriously."

"We don't want you to be lonely anymore," Itachi adds.

It's hard to breath as she remembers the moisture in her eyes are tears. It's been such a long time since she's felt so unbalanced by another's words. Outright hate she could handle, but Itachi's words were warm and soft and wide enough to fall in and curl up inside of. "I'm not-I-who said I was lonely?"

A stray tear false from her lashes onto the grass and she snaps her hands up to cover her eyes, like it's some shame. Itachi's hands are there, pulling at her left wrist. Sasuke is there too, a hand wrapped around her right wrist, thumb stroking her palm.

"You are not alone," Sasuke says.

"You are loved," Itachi adds.

"We're not going anywhere," Sasuke adds.

"And we're not letting go." Itachi finishes with a kiss to the inside of her wrist.

She looks between them, feeling her chest and eyes flush with a new rush of emotion. It's been so long, it's been years, it's been ages, it's been too long since she last felt like this. She couldn't clearly the last time she felt so loved at the hands of such close companions.

"You guys," her voice is staggered on uneven breaths. "I-I ran away-I left you-I…I…." Sakura doesn't finish her thoughts as she bows her head and falls forward into the grass to hide her face.

' _I don't deserve this. Don't look at me like that. I'm not a good person, I don't deserve your love. I don't deserve to not be let go._ '

Itachi rubs circles into her back and Sasuke waits at her side for her to find the end to years of held back tears. She cried for the empty days and the void like nights. She cried for the fear, for the loss, for the pain, for the regret. They had a way of undoing her, of finding the part of herself that was made up of knots holding the rest of her together. Like curious children with the best of intentions they pulled at her and she came unraveled like a mess upon the ground.

"You are not alone."

"You are loved."

"You're not alone."

"You are loved, you are loved, you are loved, you are loved. You are loved."

 _You are loved._

* * *

"You know this is a mistake, right?" Madara tiredly asks from the lounging chair of rich Italian wood. "This is the same set up as last time. She's bound to notice."

"Good." One of the white men with glowing gold eyes answers, but it is a different white Zetsu that finishes the sentence. It annoys Madara to no end, not knowing where to look when speaking with the creatures. "That is what we want."

Madara sneers at his captors. "You're not so impressive. She'll eat you alive. You are truly a stupid beast to be this fool hearted after having known her."

"We are not so blind with silver wrapped around our hearts." A different Zetsu steeps out of the wall to join the other four. "She is extraordinary, to be sure, but not so much that we are blinded."

Madara hears the voice behind him, but doesn't turn to see a new Zetsu grow out of the tile of the floor. "You are the one who is a fool for caring for the witch just like all her other little pets. They all grow up in the end and leave her. You're no special."

"I'm immortal. I'm not leaving her anytime soon," Madara growls, glaring down at a side table where wine and sparkling glasses sit turned upside down. He choses one to flip and pours himself a glass that he downs easily enough. "And I don't give a damn about what some outsider has to say about it. I'm never letting her go from me again."

"That's what they all say."

"But where are they now?"

"They're lost and drifting too…or dead."

"No one ever stayed and lived."

Madara flinched, looking up from the wine in his glass. "Watch it."

They were flirting with a sensitive truth Sakura still suffered from. Her old friends were in the ground because of her. Deidara had died, but Sasori…he had gone cold because she couldn't or wouldn't do what was necessary to revive what once had perished.

He remembered her screaming after then. The others mourned for her loss, but Madara mourned for her pain, because he knew she had the power in her to bring him back and keep him from passing, but it came at too terrible a cost.

" _He wouldn't want to see my soul grow so corrupted_ ," she once confessed after a bottle of her best merlot. She touched a hand to her chest and shut her eyes. " _Not with this thing still in me_."

She had meant her magic or her star or whatever it was, but Madara knew that more than just her heart was breaking as he watched her turn her face away from him. Deidara's death had nearly sent her over the edge. Sasori, who she was closer with, hurled her down deep to a place he couldn't reach her.

Still, she remembered what death rising meant, she remembered what it meant to touch the graves and reach down into them and pull something out. Even after the booze choked her lungs she knew she couldn't become such a perversion for her one time love and best friend.

"I will stay with her," Madara declares, forgetting to raise his voice. His thoughts are still drifting, all about her when he finally lifts his eyes to glare at the Zetsu standing in front of him. "And I'm not dying in front of her like that-not ever."

"Bold words for someone who doesn't even know how they ended up as an immortal."

Madara turns to the new voice and sees all the white skinned Zetsu bow and make way for the Black Zetsu to step forward. His eyes are just as gold and glowing. Madara sneers at his appearance.

"I don't want to hear that from a split tongue liar. She's going to destroy you when she finds you. I would have if I could."

"Is that what you want, the power to trike me down, to stand on the same level as your beloved? Such trivial things. As if you could ever reach such heights with bones and flesh still making up your body. I have no fear of the star swallower as long as you are here and the boy king is in my control."

Madara couldn't help but let his lips curl. He wanted to snap and bite. "He's the shit Orochimaru was guarding last time. How did you get your hands on him?"

When he speaks, Black Zetsu is mocking. "Pein of the six paths is an old friend of mine. We go _way_ back."

Madara remembers the room or mirrors. He remembers seeing all his family die over years of torture and then, all of a sudden, the mirrors blink out one by one, going black. He was used to their glass shattering in their frames when they died, but he had never seen their glass go black. Then she came into his hell like a supernova, burning down that snake and cleaning up a way for him to get free.

But instead of leaving with him she had sent him out on his own and stayed behind to 'set some business in order' with the boy Zetsu called Pein. Whatever business it was, it didn't last long, and she never mentioned it again and he never pried.

The world around them trembled in a shockwave that was the echo of something far larger elsewhere in the world. Madara's eyes went wide as he spread his legs and lowered his center of gravity in an effort to stay up. Zetsu just laughed, low and mean from across the floor. There was nothing that would shake him. His eyes were sharp and gleaming as his smile stretched.

"Speaking of which, it's about time that boy make some trouble."

Another rumble, this one closer, made Madara grunt and reach for the arm of the chair. There were cracks in the walls and he could hear plaster and marble alike tearing apart in the rooms just down the hall.

Seconds later a tear in the wall opened and Madara could see down the hallway to where the boy had once lay alone and asleep. Now he was awake and screaming from the pain in his head as his gray eyes bled. The world around him was a void filled with terror. It was like a black hole, moving and sucking as he thrashed in pain. Pein shuddered in pain one more time before falling back into the pillows of his daybed.

The tremors stopped.

"A hick up."

Madara stared up at Zetsu in angry horror. "The fuck was that?"

"Hopefully it will be something worth a struggle from our star child. It's not much now, but in an hour or so, it might even be too much for her." Zetsu's grin is full of teeth, too many teeth. "What do you think?"

Madara threw the wineglass to the side and pushed himself up. The room still felt like it was spinning. He could see the scars of destruction, running like a river to the room at the back of the castle where Zetsu left the catalysts for destruction. Madara could see where Pein reclined in pain.

"What's wrong with him? What did you do?" Madara's voice was a snarl, but when he turned around, Zetsu was gone. He was left alone with Pein. He turned back to look for Zetsu and when he couldn't see him, twisted on his heel to face Pein's trail of destruction. He cursed before surging forward, not knowing what he would do.

Pein started to shake and the world followed in suit. Madara swore as he fell to his side as the slab of floor under him cracked and lifted. He clung for the edges of it in desperation, feeling his hair and shirt sleeves turn towards the black hole forming above Pein's head as he screamed. There was screaming and Madara didn't know if it was coming from him or the boy made for destruction.

The palace cracked further and Madara felt himself pulled closer, prompted by a perverted gravity. He twisted and kicked off a slab of floor to grab the edge of something a little more secure, a cut in the floor. He grunted, throwing his arm down and holding strain was mounting and he could feel more and more pressure pulling at him towards the hole. He turned to look over his shoulder and winced when he saw the debris that was sucked into the epicenter of the void. There was no surviving that, immortal or not.

Another loud crack sounded off to the side and Madara saw eve more of the wall break away and come up torn. He cursed as it came close to where he was. If it sagged down too low he could be clipped and picked up along with it. His mind was a mess of swears as he rebuked his stupidity for not turning tail and getting away far and fast.

More and more of the world was tearing away. More and more was tearing up. Tile and dirt and plaster and furniture came up around him and passed him on the way to Pein's dark hole. He felt more whizzing past him, some close, some far.

A cloth flapped against his forearm and he flinched. The fabric was different. There was no sucking rush to it. He flinched and looked up.

His heart stopped.

Gravity didn't mean anything to her. She strolled in, looking a bit tired in her eyes, no nothing short of magnificent. She could have been wearing a grow for how erect she held her neck, shoulders back, chest tight. She stopped next to Madara and knelt down, touching his shoulder and spreading heat through her contact. The world stopped spinning around him even if stuff was still flying, that didn't matter because she was here.

"What are you doing on the floor?" Sakura sighed, running a hand through his hair.

His heart was in danger of breaking, she was finally here. After years of waiting…finally. His smile came too easily. "Can't you tell? I'm falling for you even further."

Sakura's eyes are stunned for a moment, not quite believing his banter. But then her eyes soften and the hand in his hair curls around his ear to tickle the sensitive skin there. He hums in pleasure, leaning into her touch.

"Of course. I shouldn't have expected anything else."

"God, I've missed you," he hummed, feeling his heart stutter. Too happy, too happy, too happy, too happy.

"Look at yourself, getting into trouble the second I look away. What did you do this time?"

He's finally able to stand, but he grabs her hand when she begins to pull away. Locking eyes, he lifts it to his lips and kisses her palm. "Something terrible. You were gone for more than a second, after all."

She doesn't flinch, but her lips do turn down. "Yes, I suppose so. I've been away too long this time."

"This time?" He tugs her closer as the world around them crumbles. "There won't be another time. I'm going wherever you go, even if you don't want me in sight, I'm staying close. I'm never going to parted from you again."

Sakura canters her eyes to the side. "You're going to have to forgive yourself for just this one time. I'm going to have to set things to rest for good." When he tugs on her hand she sighs, eyes downcast. "For good this time…I promise."

"I understand, but I'm still staying. I'm not going anywhere. You can't shake me off that easily, love."

Sakura grins, stepping towards Pein even as more of the castle falls apart. "I didn't think I could."

Madara falls into step behind her, trailing in her wake as she walks across the rubble like it's not even there. The cape of spinning gold and red is a beautifl beacon for Madara to follow. He keeps close enough to touch her if he needs to, but hangs back to give her that respect and space.

Even when Pein sits up and his eyes fill was familiar love, Madara doesn't crowd her, he hangs back and lets her work.

Sakura floats down to the daybed beside Pein and holds his face. Madara hangs back as they exchange words. Pein speaks to her and it's clear they have history between them. It's almost enough to make him shake in envy, but he hangs back. She deserves it. She deserves this sort of closure.

"I'm going to take your curse now," she tells him. "I'm going to set you free."

"I'm going to cease to exist," Pein says, voice staggered with exhaustion. "You're not going to follow me."

"Maybe, eventually I'll make it to where you are going," she says raising a hand. "But not today."

Pein watches her, searching her face and Madara looks on as Pein comes to some sort of peace as he bows his head and leans into her. Madara's eyes narrow at the way Sakura's face goes tight with strain.

She braces and the shift occurs. Her eyes go wide, spinning with ancient magic as she glows from something deep inside. She inhales and Pein strains as his body turns gray and then black. Madara watches the grains of black cloister around Pein's mouth before they emerge as writing black arms, flaking off into butterflies. There's a tornado of black flapping wings as Pein falls dead under her hands.

Madara can't help but flinch back from the heat as Sakura burns with a star deep in her chest that shatters into pure light. She sucks down the first trail of curses, devouring more and more into her. His eyes are wide as he watches her take a world of darkness into her until it taints her skin, turning her black all over. The chaos is around her as she falls in a stupor, staggering from the size of the curse.

She's black all over and drunk with darkness.

Sakura braces on the edge of the daybed and shuts her eyes, beginning to burn away the curses once more. It's a beautiful sight as she slowly begins to glow from cracks in the darkness of her skin. Her light is mounting, mounting, growing, growing-

She screams and Madara reacts because he knows what that sound means. Zetsu is looming over her, hand deep in her chest, pulling at the star inside her. He's screaming in his own sort of laughter as he begins to burn up, but not before he finds her star and begins to rip it free from her.

Her lips pull back and her voice shatters Madara with a fear he didn't know existed within him. She's screaming a death cry and he feels it deep inside him, deeper than the silver sting, deeper than history can say. She's going to die and she's finally back in his life, finally right in front of her. She's dying. She's going to die in front of him. She's going to die.

Die.

This was the bastard's plan from the beginning. This was why he brought them all here, lured them in, baited her with them. He always wanted a star and he planned on taking hers. Taking her star would kill her. She would die right in front of him.

No.

Madara found something inside of him and burst it open, taking and soaring with a new surge. The world bled red and black and spun as he gripped black fire in his hand and drove it deep into the neck of Black Zetsu.

Madara came out of nowhere and devastated. Zetsu staggered free, hand empty and burning as he stumbled over himself, bleeding from too many places. Madara roared again and surged, more black fire tearing open a gash in Zetsu. Zetsu melts into white and before crumbling away.

Madara pauses a moment to make sure the threat is truly gone before turning to Sakura who's eyes are blank, open wide, staring off into nothing as her body trembles with a loosened star still lightly tethered.

"Sakura!" he screams her name and reaches for her, catching her and pulling her close to his chest. He can see where she is cracked and broken. She's struggling to breath as the curse inside her threats to take over. She hasn't finished the purification. He worries because Pein's curse is no small matter.

"Damn it," he hisses, covering the crack above her heart with his hand and praying it would close up. "You're not allowed to do that. I'm not impressive enough to protect you."

Her fingers twitch before Sakura moved her hand to grab his wrist and hold his hand over her heart and keep it there. "Don't move."

She blinks and then her eyes begin to focus. She shudders and inhales before the glowing begins again. Madara feels himself tremble as he holds her through the healing and the burning. She tenses and strains, more than he's ever seen her do, but she devours the curse with her life on a scream that sends the once black butterflies rushing out of her mouth on a stream of white moth wings. They fly high overhead in glittering wings before twinkling out, one by one.

"It is finished."

Madara forces himself to chuckle, still holding her in his arms. "You did amazing, love. I'm so proud of you."

It takes some effort, but Sakura turns to Madara and smiles a tired smile. Weakly she lifts a hand to his face. "You can take me back now."

"To Boston?"

She nods, thinking of her shop. "Yeah. Let's go home."

* * *

Sakura remembers the dance hall. She remembers the beads and the dazzle and the smoke of half lit cigarettes held between loose fingers as a gramophone plays in between the breaks meant for the live band. Her headband keeps her beautiful waved hair close to her face and when she spins the beads of her dress fly out like shooting star tails. Hands return to her waist and she dips low before being brought back up into the swing of the dance on heels made for such nights. She is a vision in red, green eyes dancing.

"I never want this dance to end," she laughs, dipping her head closer to Shisui's as he leans in at the same time, allowing their shoulders and hands to swing up, side to side.

"Forget this dance, I never want this night to end!" Shisui cries back with eyes creased in a smile that threatens to take over his whole face. "Never want any of this to be a mere memory. I'm going to dance forever with you here on this dance floor. We have eternity after all."

Prohibition is over, but the streets are no less wet and speakeasies still pretend to keep secrets for just a little longer. It's only been days and some are fearful of the law reversing again. No one takes down their locks, and many keep bodies by the front door as a precaution. Sakura's never had a reason to fear them.

"You can live in this night forever, but it's my turn to dance," a voice cuts in.

Sakura smiles at the pouting Uchiha and turning to his older uncle.

Many like to think Izuna a kind stoic, but for Sakura he's too free with his emotions, a fact Madara has told her she should be proud of. Aside from his brother and a few close family members, the kids' a stiff.

Shisui releases Sakura with a sigh and shoves his hands into the pockets of his trousers, ready to walk off, but not before sparing a flirty wink for her over his shoulder. "Night, sweet thing."

His shoulder pushed into Izuna's on the way to the side tables where another group of ladies loitered. Shisui looked too cute when he was pouting to not attract a few sympathetic hearts to his side. He would be fine. Maybe with a little luck he'd be better than fine and not come back home. Maybe.

"He's far too _handsy_ to take out in public," Izuna sighs before moving closer to her.

"Don't you mean he's too handsy to leave at home. You know he's most dangerous when no one's around to watch him," Sakura teases back.

"What a hazard," Izuna sighs.

"He's your family," she laughs, thinking it so funny how a clan so close can be so different.

Izuna and Shisui are two of the most extreme examples to take into consideration. While Shisui is energy and mirth and a helpless flirty, Izuna is a sweet soul as soft and calm and quiet as you would expect an older brother to be, even if he's not technically the eldest beside Madara.

"We're more alike than you may think, but yes, to the untrained eye we are a varied mess of men."

"Only you would say something like that. I don't think anyone else looking at you would be able to see enough to find your differences." Sakura pauses and then reconsiders her words. "Ah, anyone normal I should say."

Izuna takes her to his side and guides her into the first steps of their dance, sparing only a single glance off to the side before his eyes are on her and only her. "We seem to dance on the edge of one world set apart from another. Less and less believe these days. Will there be a day when there are no more curses?"

"Maybe, but man's advancement can only substitute so much malice. There were always be the old ways, even if there are only a handful of old crones still proficient enough to warp them. It'd be a dream to live in a world truly devoid of all these curses and charms."

Izuna doesn't falter in his steps, but Sakura feels a bit of his grace falter. It's harder for him to be fluid around her. When he bends down to speak closer to her she understands why.

"You wish for your own ending?"

"You would chastise me for that," Sakura sighs, voice still light.

"You're not at all put off by the thought of dying, are you? I can't pin down if that is because of hubris or if you are truly so unhappy. Tell me what would make this life worth wanting. You take no lovers, you have so few joys. I'm worried for your pleasure."

"Oh you make me sound so droll, don't worry for me so much. Izuna you are a dear." She falls into his arms as they turn, heels clicking across the polished floor in a way that makes her feel a little bit better. She loves the smaller sounds, the fingernails tapping windows, heels on marble, fabric on fabric…the sounds only she hears and appreciates. It makes her spine tingle. "I'm quite happy as I am."

"You're happy with us?"

She closes her eyes, knowing that's a loaded question he wants her to answer. Do they give her happiness? Yes. Is it enough? She refuses to let it be. Their feelings are not their own. It's only because of the curse she once removed that they feel so enamored with her. It will be like that, regardless of their sex, age, gender, race, or disposition. With some people the bond is stronger, with others it is weak enough to forget for a time, but never enough to truly sever.

The Uchiha men are unique. Sakura has to admit it sooner or later. Their bonds to her are some of the strongest she's ever seen. But in addition to that, their curses were also unique. Each one came individually crafted for the Uchiha, but they all had the same basic pattern that refused to be devoured all at once.

After Sakura freed them she meant to eventually finish her work and kill the last seed of the curse in them, but when it came time to finish the deed, a fear stopped her. She saw in her mind's eye what would happen to the boys. They would become dust on the floor in front of her, aged to oblivion. If she ate their curse she would kill them.

She considered telling them this, but every time she opened her mouth there was another confession of how much happy they were to be alive, how grateful they were, how they looked forward to something or loved another thing. They enjoyed being alive, so she did the cowardly thing and kept her mouth shut.

Looking up at Izuna now she wondered if she should tell him. Even if he seemed so concerned with her passive desire for an end to her life, maybe he would understand if he knew he was immortal too, for as long as the seeds of their curses still sat at the bottom of their souls. Until she removed those, they would never age and always be young and healthy.

"Sakura?" His words help her remember their earlier conversation. Was she happy with them? After she forgot to feel guilty, was she happy with them?

"I think so." Sakura tries to smile. "I'm sorry if that's not what you wanted to hear."

"You trust me with the truth, sweet one," Izuna says, kissing the side of her face quickly before someone can see and be shocked for their open affection. Society is so stiff in anyplace other than the speakeasies and dance halls. "Thank you my dear. I will always treasure your words."

"Why do I feel even worse for having said what you didn't want to hear,?" Sakura laughs. "You are too good to me."

"That is the plan. I will shower you in affection until I see a smile, but once I see that smile all my affections will not nearly shower, but drown you. I seek to engulf you in my love."

Sakura always feels his words for a moment and falters in the dance. Izuna pulls her closer and she feels his chest heave with a new sucking breath as his eyes go wide. He's waiting for her to fall for him and love him.

"You're too good for me," Sakura laughs, but her voice is too sad. It nearly breaks Izuna's heart.

"I love you, Sakura."

She nods, swallowing. "I know."

It is not enough. She's the girl that has never had a lover, that has never even loved herself. An immortal with nothing to live for.

Izuna holds her tighter, his grip is nearly trembling. "I do," he hisses, brows high above his eyes, submissive and sad. "I do. I love you forever, no matter what. I'll love you forever. I'll love you always. We all will. Don't think there isn't any way we would be opposed to bringing you happiness."

Sakura swallows again as the music slows down. She stops and pats the side of his face. Shisui's gone off to try and pretend the girl he's with is a thousand year old curse swallowing witch, but Izuna's still in front of her and he has no intention of looking away from her. There is a silver threat between their hearts, and hers is strangling her. With all the souls she's saved she can weave a noose for her neck by now.

The music fades and there is cheering from the crowd. No one notices how Sakura kisses Izuna with such a sad smile, before pulling away with tears trapped in her eyes.

"I know."

It was a memory Izuna will cherish forever.

* * *

Sakura sleeps for nearly a month straight, waking every few days to leave her bed and wander for five to ten minutes before the effort saps her too much and she has to return to her covers and sleep off a little more. She's sleeping until the tethers of her star are back in place, even though she suspects some are broken preeminently and she'll remember Zetsu's assault for as long as she lives.

The Uchiha take turns sleeping in bed beside her. A shift schedule was hashed out once they realized she would be waking up periodically for minutes at a time. Someone needed to be right there next to her as soon as she was awake for food, drink, and other needs.

After her star was damaged Sakura felt hunger a lot more, something that never existed in her after the star swallowing. She ate curses, and a steady diet of them, but now she craved apples and pears and bread and all other sorts of good things to eat like any other human.

But as her star heals, her appetite diminishes, though her sleeping habits remain irregularly long. The changes are noted but the amount of time the Uchiha spend alongside Sakura does not diminish.

One midday she wakes up and Kagami is there. He's peeling an apple for her and has cut slices of it away to steal for himself. When he catches Sakura watching him he grins, sheepishly.

"Most of it was meant for you."

"That is fine. I am well without it." Sakura closes her eyes again and it almost seems like she will fall back asleep when she pulls back the covers and sits up. "What is it?"

Kagami stops pealing. "Hm?"

"You want to ask me something, I can tell."

Kagami chuckles in good nature before finishing the apple and tossing the peel into the trash between his feet. "How astute. I'm not sure I want to know how you figured that out, but I'll applaud you either way. Yes, I was hoping to have the chance to talk to you for a moment…alone. That's not easy."

Sakura nods, head feeling heavy. "What do you want to ask me?"

"One of the things the boys shared with me was the fact that they knew your secret. Zetsu told them in hopes of turning them against you, but the bastard obviously didn't know how zealous Uchiha could be for their hearts." He watches Sakura stiffen but goes on. "We all know that you didn't consume the fullness of our is why the Uchiha are immortal now. If you had taken it all, you would have killed us on the spot. We've been on the earth too long to not be magic. Take that magic away and…"

Sakura shuts her eyes and feels the impact of the words. "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

"Yeah," Kagami agrees. "But they were all adamant on staying with you. They wouldn't want it any other way."

"But you're not like them." Sakura's eyes search his and she sees something older in them. "You've lost enough and you're ready for death. Ah, that's what you wanted to be alone for."

"Is that too morbid a request so soon after waking?" he asks with a laugh.

Sakura can't help but let her shoulders fall. Kagami is kind, and she feels lighter after she had expected the weight of fear to pull her down. He is still able to laugh, and that's enough for her.

"You've wanted this for a while." It's not a guess.

"I was ready to go long ago. I'll admit, I'm a little attracted to you, or I'm more attracted to you than I've been to anyone else I've ever known, but I wasn't a man made to feel attraction in the first place, so I guess it's sort of uncomfortable for me. Those guys are different. They'll never let you go, but I think I need to." He pauses with the naked apple in his hands before cutting into it. "I'm sorry for asking this of you, especially after you've done so much for us. I'll never be able to repay our debt to you, but it looks like our family will continue to burden you for a little longer."

"Have you spoken with the others about this?" Sakura asks, glancing towards the door.

"They know." She turns back and sees the plate of sliced apple being prepared by hesitant fingers. "They've left me here for it, but that's only if you're feeling up to it. You need your rest more than anything."

Sakura remembered wanting to die. She remembered wanting to leave it all behind and be done with it. She remembered exhausting herself with magic to force the aging process along. She was no magician, but she became fairly adapt after spending a thousand years of curses.

Maybe her feeling of wanting to die was different from his. His death was a natural one. Sakura touched a hand to her breast and pressed. Her skin cracked in places and she saw bleeding light. She was not natural anymore.

"A curse would help this recovery along, actually."

Kagami reaches for her and pulls her closer. In one hand he offers her an apple slice, pushing it past her lips and into her mouth. He touches her jaw, prompting her to chew. "They'll love you forever, you know."

Sakura chews and then swallows. "I know."

"Maybe you should let them."

Sakura closes her eyes and it takes an effort to open them again. Her lips want to form the word no, but the feelings of her heart will not be swallowed. "Maybe."

With a smile Kagami leans back and raises his hands. "I'm ready when you are."

So Sakura closes her eyes and burns. Moments later there is nothing left of Kagami Uchiha aside from a plate of sliced apple pieces and a few tear stains on the bedspread.

* * *

She sleeps.

The next time she wakes, she is not alone~

* * *

"She wears darkness as a queen wears a crown: proud, confident, beautiful and above all meant only for her."  
-Sophia Carey

* * *

AN: This was for Madasaku week over on tumblr. You can blame the people there for prompting me to get out and write this.

I wrote a story called Nightmarish for a contest in 2011, which was so long ago, but the idea never died inside me and I knew I could come back to it one day and write about Sakura again and maybe make her a bit more mature. I've matured, and I think that's helped. (Maybe?) Let me dream a little. :)

Oh yeah, and this is the fanficc. net friendly version. There is another version that will be out on my A03 (same user name) with the addition of what happens when Sakura wakes up. I meant to have that portion finished this week, but unfortunately things came up and I wasn't able to get it done in time so that last bit will be late. (I'm thinking another week?)  
If you're content with this sort of ending that's cool too. If you want the gratuitous Uchisaku fanservice that I'm not going to blame you for it.

Reviews are greatly appreciated. Thank you. I always love to hear how you liked or experienced my writing.

-Vesper Chan


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